A retired teacher is locked in a legal battle with a woman, who claims to be her daughter-in-law over the burial of a police officer, who died while undergoing treatment at a hospital in Eldoret City.
The vicious fight between Ms Elizabeth Yator, 66, and Caroline Mumbua, 38, features a clash of cultures between the Kamba and Keiyo communities on matters of dowry.
Ms Yator has refused to recognise Ms Mumbua as the legal wife of the late Victor Korir, with whom the latter says they have four children.
Korir died on August 20, 2024, at Reale Hospital in Eldoret, leaving behind seven children, including Ms Mumbua’s four.
Ms Mumbua holds that she was legally married to Korir and that he had paid the dowry in the form of goats before his death.
She argues that she had lived with Korir for 18 years. But Ms Yator would hear none of that. The retired primary school teacher argues that her son had many concubines, including Ms Mumbua.
On Monday, she told Senior Principal Magistrate Onkoba Mogire that although Ms Mumbua had four children with the deceased, he died a bachelor.
"My late son never had a stable marriage as he had several women in every workstation he served as a police officer. For Mumbua to claim that she was married to him is a lie as she was just one of his girlfriends," she said.
But she admitted that, together with other relatives, she took three goats to Ms Mumbua’s home in Ukambani, insisting it was a present and not a dowry.
Following the dispute, Ms Mumbua acquired a court order stopping the burial of the deceased officer.
She sued Ms Yator and her brother-in-law, Hosea Kiptoo Korir, whom she accused of scheming to bury her husband in Kibendo village, Elgeyo Marakwet County.
She wants to be given the right to bury him on a piece of land she claims they lived on as husband and wife in Uswo village in Uasin Gishu County.
Her supposed mother-in-law, on the other hand, is fighting to bury her deceased son in Kibendo. The burial had been scheduled to take place on August 23 at his parents’ home in Kibendo.
Ms Yator told the court that to the best of her knowledge, Ms Mumbua was never married to her son even though they were in a relationship for 18 years.
The retired teacher told the court that the Kalenjin community only recognises payment of a minimum of four cows as dowry and not goats, while Ms Mumbua said the goats were documented as dowry according to the Kamba culture.
“I have never recognised her as my daughter-in-law as she claims in her court documents. The goats we took to her parent's home in Ukambani were just a present and not dowry,” she told the court.
An extremely emotional Ms Yator, while testifying in the case, accused Ms Mumbua of abandoning her son during his sickness in the hospital, only resurfacing when she heard that he had passed on.
Ms Yator claimed that according to Keiyo culture, she has a right to bury her son since he died a bachelor, and no woman can claim to be the next of kin or wife to the deceased.
However, the daughter-in-law argues that the deceased must be buried at their two-acre piece of land in the Suswo area in the neighbouring Uasin Gishu County.
The court has since barred the long-serving teacher or her agents from interfering with the body at the morgue until the matter is heard and determined.
Korir’s body is being preserved at Iten County Referral Hospital mortuary in Elgeyo Marakwet County, pending a hearing and determination of the case.
Mr Mumbua denied claims that she abandoned the deceased and insisted to the court that she had been taking care of her husband at Reale Hospital in Eldoret where he had been admitted until his demise on August 20, 2024.
